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Berlin is a city layered with history: a palimpsest of ruins, rebuildings, and marks of the past, even of futuristic imaginations that are now history. These layers can seem romantic and invited the modern flaneur to imagine Berlin alongside other cosmopolitan and urban projection screens. But the multi-layered city also implies a casting aside, a covering up, digging up, and hiding. The ruins of Berlin tell a story of an injured city, whose wounds are variously exposed to lay the finger on the wound of historical reckoning, or plastered in a vain attempt to heal, or return to a state prior to injury, as artist Kader Attia put it about the city of Berlin. The city as a multi-layered palimpsest thus reveals psycho-affective and political strategies of future-making and heritage-mobilisation. In this seminar, we trace and dig into the difficult, awkward, eerie, uncomfortable heritage of the city and speak to stakeholders involved in its transition: curators, activists, artists, citizens. The seminar will produce a modular book-case, which can be unpacked into a mini-exhibition, featuring students’ own profiled “difficult heritage” sites of the city with a brief problematisation. These loose pages will be put together in a box to create a mobile, modular book-exhibition. Among the sites that may be visited are: Zionskirche, Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer, Stasi Archive and headquarters, Humboldt Forum, Holocaust Memorial and the Sinti Roma Memorial, exhibition "looking back” at Museen Treptow-Köpenick. The seminar focuses on field visits with methodological exercises, which introduce students to diverse ways of doing research that they will build on to articulate their own research outcomes in a multimodal portfolio.
Language requirements:
English B2
German A2 recommended
Please note the individual session dates:
Monday, 22 April, 16-18
Monday, 29 April, 14-18
Saturday, 4 May, 10h-18h
Sunday, 5 May, 10h-18
Monday, 3 June, 14-18
Monday, 17 June, 14h-18
CARMAH (Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage)
Institut für Europäische Ethnologie
M*straße 40/41, 10117 Berlin
Room: 408 (4th floor)
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This course is part of the Berlin Perspectives program for international exchange students. Regular degree-seeking students are also welcome to attend within the elective part of their study program. Courses are offered by the Career Center as part of the elective program üWP.
Berlin Perspectives seminars are specifically designed for undergraduate-level students. As a master's student, please check with your university beforehand to confirm whether the study points can be recognized.
Upon completion of the seminar, students will receive 5 ECTS.
The detailed syllabus for this course is available on the Berlin Perspectives website:
https://hic.hu-berlin.de/en/berlin-perspectives/courses
Registration for the Summer Semester 2024 is open until 9 April 2024.
Places are allocated via Agnes through a lottery procedure (not on a first-come, first-served basis).
You will be notified by 12 April 2024 if you have been allocated a place.
Please make sure to attend the first session to confirm your participation. If you have changed your mind about the course, kindly sign out in Agnes. Other students will be happy to take your place in the seminar.
If you were placed on the waiting list, there is still a chance of moving up in the first few weeks of the semester if other students decide to drop the course. In that case, please inform the teachers of your interest. |
